Chapter 30
It was the middle of the night when Harthon woke me with a light nudge of my shoulder and a fleeting kiss to my forehead, yet I was more awake than I’d ever been.
An unnatural buzz surged through me, every heartbeat sending a frantic kind of energy to the ends of my limbs. If I couldn’t already guess the cause, the fever pulsating beneath my ribs was making it rather obvious. The core of knowledge was ready, eager, and annoyingly impatient.
My hands trembled as we donned our cloaks, which the Horrads had returned to us last night. When Harthon observed me with concern, I explained, “It’s antsy.”
He stuffed a bundle of flatbread into a pocket. “Good.”
Stefano, Joris, and Aric were ready and waiting outside, the wolf standing dutifully with them. The camp was quiet, but several Horrads paid us mind from a distance. The leader, identified by their long, beaded necklace, was among them.
Harthon quickly catalogued them. “We’re just going to go, and we’ll adjust our strategy if needed.” When everyone murmured their agreement, Harthon nodded to me. “Lead the way.”
Never would I have thought I’d ever be leading two Princepes through hostile lands.
Do your thing, I encouraged the little heart of knowledge. Not that it needed a push. As if it’d grown arms, it was shoving against my chest, propelling me around our tent with the undeniable force I’d only ever felt in my dreams.
Harthon could have told me to stop, and I wouldn’t have been able to.
The Horrad leader and several others trailed docilely behind us, keeping up with the brisk pace I set even as their tents and campfires faded into the shadowed landscape. They wielded no weapons, only torches, suggesting they were merely curious.
I hoped it stayed that way.
We weren’t concerned about them seeing the entrance to the Domus. If it was visible to the naked eye, they would have already found it. And if it wasn’t, they would either be too afraid of the Domus to follow us, or we would deal with their presence there when we returned with Harthon’s forces.
I trusted the others were monitoring them, because I couldn’t.
The pressure in my chest, which had been gradually building with every step, was now tipping into pain.
I sped into a near-jog as that pressure expanded to my lungs, crowding them, forcing them to fight for their share of space within me.
When my breathing became thready, I gave up all pretense and broke into a run, suddenly fearing this thing within me was so excited, so focused, it would suffocate me from the inside out. As it was, it had nearly made me fall to my death back at Harthon’s Citadel.
Further and further we went, time an inconsequential blur as I sought that relief, that rightness that I’d been chasing since this ball came alive within me. It was teasing me, so unbearably close and yet dancing out of reach.
I was still running when my vision flashed out, still running when a new scene replaced the shadowed woods. A familiar scene. The one that turned everything I knew on its head and landed me here.
Bright, gold light slithered over a black canvas as I lost track of my feet, my limbs, the chill of the air.
The brightness amplified, those tendrils of light swirling, dancing, twisting around one another in the beginnings of a lattice.
The glow of knowledge in my torso morphed into something else, something bigger, something searing—
A guttural cry tore from me as I tripped, suddenly back in my body. I landed hard, hands buckling beneath me, ribs cracking against rocks. All that burning was replaced by the throb of my bones as I struggled to suck in a breath.
A series of curses cut the air above me, and a large hand landed on my back.
“Etarla—”
“I’m—” I wheezed— “alright.”
I think.
“Take your time. The Horrads aren’t chasing us. We don’t need to rush,” Harthon’s familiar timbre was a temporary balm, suppressing the whirlwind of sensations.
“It’s making me rush,” I gasped out. I cradled my ribs with one hand and shoved up with the other, twisting to face him.
His face almost glowed, cast in a subtle wash of indigo moonlight. But the moon was hidden by the clouds, and he was facing me on the ground as he crouched at my side.
“They’re really glowing, aren’t they?” I asked.
He nodded vaguely as he studied my eyes.
Beyond him, Aric whistled. “Who needs firelight when you have those?”
“Per usual, I’m not controlling this,” I reminded him, rubbing my chest and glancing down at the rocks that’d so kindly cushioned my fall.
But they weren’t rocks at all.
Ropes of wood twisted over one another, locked in a battle for dominance, the tangled limbs growing thicker until they culminated in the base of a tree so wide, I wondered if my glowing eyes were imagining it.
It had no branches, just a trunk that had to be the width of three men. Its height had been cut short, jagged edges of bark reaching to the sky like the spires of a damaged crown.
I didn’t know this mottled tree, but I knew those roots as surely as I knew my own name.
It was a presumptuous conclusion. All tree roots looked the same. But it was with an innate sense of recognition that I knew these were the very roots I’d seen when the magvis changed my eyes—the same ones those tendrils of light had been about to form before I fell on my face.
This was it.
Bruises forgotten, I slipped from Harthon’s touch and hurried to the tree. Joris and Stefano were already circling the back of the trunk.
“Nothing here.” Stefano’s voice floated around its circumference.
He stood before a gaping hole, a wide, cavernous split in the trunk that began at its foot and ended just overhead. I palmed the smooth edge and leaned my head inside.
All at once, the searing pressure in my ribs receded, winding itself back into that little, gentle kernel of warmth.
Never had anything felt so instinctually right.
My irises weren’t bright enough to illuminate the tree’s interior, but they scattered the shadows, so I leaned closer, stepping in—
My toes were touching solid ground, and then they weren’t. It was like the bottom of the tree disintegrated, taking my weight down with it, and for the second time in a single minute, I fell. Three hands were quick to stop my momentum.
For Domus’ sake.
“I touched the base before. I swear it was solid seconds ago,” Stefano said with confusion as they hauled me back up.
Harthon’s grip on my waist guided me back a step.
Aric skirted around me, kneeled, and ran a hand along the ground where I’d been standing. The appendage disappeared as his body leaned forward.
“It’s like some sort of slide,” he observed, bracing his free hand so he could follow the slope further.
When he’d gone as far as he could, he retreated and rubbed the dirt from his palm.
“There are tree roots running along it. The magvis probably used them to climb her way out, then sealed the hole back up behind her.”
Somewhere beyond the tree, a twig snapped. I jolted, craning around the trunk to see what Joris and Stefano already monitored. The Horrads had caught up. There were still no weapons in their hands, but being where the magvis had escaped the Domus surfaced a new worry.
When I’d encountered the magvis, she was bleeding out. From the way the Horrads treated me, they wouldn’t have attacked her. But why would she have run all the way to Second Territory instead of staying here with people who would want her safe—especially if she was injured?
It didn’t make sense.
Then again, the Horrads weren’t the most welcoming bunch. I wouldn’t want to camp with them alone, either.
The Horrad leader took the two torches, approached, and extended them in offering. Stefano and Joris took them cautiously, but the leader simply dipped their burlap-covered head and retreated to their companions.
It seemed they weren’t here to stop us, after all.
Harthon took Joris’ torch and relayed the plan. He and Joris would go first, followed by me and Stefano, finishing with Aric. When he was done, he waved the flame into the base of the tree, leaned in, and dropped the torch. The orange light fell away from his face and disappeared completely.
“Looks like two, maybe three stories at most,” Harthon reported, pushing out from the tree. He turned around, dropped to his knees, and eased himself over the edge.
I couldn’t help but worry that he’d be met with some kind of threat, but hardly a minute had passed when his muffled voice traveled up to us. “It’s clear. The roots go all the way down.”
Joris followed, and then it was my turn. I positioned myself as they had, found the two thickest roots, and eased my legs down the steep decline, remembering all too well how unskilled I was at repelling from high places.
“You got this,” Stefano quietly encouraged.
And if you don’t, Harthon will cushion your fall.
But as I slid my hands down, my arms already felt stronger, my grip steadier than when I’d last jumped from my window.
The last thing I saw before my head dipped underground were the blank visages of the Horrads that would no doubt plague my nightmares, and the wolf turning tail and trotting away.
* * *
Princeps Aric—he who displayed his greatest kills as trophies on his wall—was claustrophobic.
He was doing his best to hide it, but the torchlight, made more concentrated in the confined space, revealed the tight pull to his mouth and the way his nostrils flared on every heavy breath. If that hadn’t given it away, his silence would have.